What is Great Veterinary Website Content?

We’ve talked time and time again about how content is king. It’s what will get your veterinary website found online, and more importantly, what will get your readers to follow and share it with their own networks. But content is worth nothing if it isn’t great. So, what is great veterinary website content? Well, that’s something that can be broken down into two distinct elements; the “content” part, which can formally be defined, and the “great” part, which is wholly subjective. Let’s take a look at both.

Content

The content of your veterinary website is the basic ingredient that makes up your online presence. It’s what you “feed” your readers, so to speak, in the hopes of capturing their attention and enticing them to come back for more. Content may fall into one of several categories, as follows:

Educational – This type of content, at least in terms of blogging, usually takes the form of “how-to” articles. This is an excellent category for the veterinary industry, as we as professionals are natural leaders and teachers. We can use our veterinary websites and blogs to share information and educate our clients and prospects. This type of content helps to position you as an expert and a valuable go-to resource in your community.

News – Blogs are excellent tools for disseminating important news and information to a large audience quickly. In the veterinary field, there are frequent updates that come up that are of value to our clientele, such as new technologies and product recalls. You can use your blog to deliver updates like these to your audience and keep them in the know, which people appreciate.

Opinion – This type of content typically takes something that is hot or newsworthy at the moment and allows you the opportunity to put your own spin on it or offer your personal opinion. Once you’ve established yourself and your veterinary website with your audience, they will come to know and trust your opinion posts.

Entertainment – Not everything has to be about news or how-to’s. The beauty of blogs is that they offer a more light-hearted approach to delivering content. You can use your veterinary blog to share funny pet-related stories, post an entertaining video or picture, host a contest or anything else that you feel your clients and prospects would enjoy. Make it fun and creative!

Social – Interactive content that encourages readers to participate and share their own thoughts or opinions can be very successful in terms of virality. You can capitalize on the social aspect of blogging by using your veterinary blog as a tool for continuing the conversation with your most engaged clients, and inviting prospects to join in too.

Some blogs are designed to fit into just one of these categories, but you can just as easily incorporate a little of everything into your veterinary blog. This makes your content much more diverse and robust, which makes it more interesting to your readers. They’ll wonder what you’ll share next and want to come back to see as each post is published.

Great

As mentioned above, this part of the “great content” formula is subjective. What you feel is great, interesting and engaging content may be completely different from what someone else would define the same way. That being said, there are certain elements that are universal across all content that can be considered great. These elements are as follows:

Shareable – It’s a pretty good indication that your content is hitting the mark when people are consistently sharing it with their own networks. If this isn’t happening, it’s probably time to tweak or change your approach until you begin to achieve these types of results.

Interactive – In order to engage your clients and prospects with your veterinary blog, your content must encourage them to comment and share their opinions. Comment-worthy content fosters ongoing communication, which further solidifies those valuable relationships that make a veterinary practice so successful. Just make sure that when readers comment, you respond.

Quotable – If other blogs or articles use quotes or references from your veterinary website (giving you credit, of course), it’s a sign of great content.

Linkable – One of the goals of developing content for your veterinary website should be getting incoming links. Not only does this prove that your content is valuable to others, but it’s also important in terms of how your website ranks on the search engines.

Repeatable – While it’s never ok to straight out copy other people’s content, when someone uses your content as inspiration for their own or talks about something you’ve pointed out in one of your blog posts, it’s an obvious sign that you’re doing something right.

When it comes to creating great content, there’s no magical formula. The best thing you can do is to learn what your readers want and need, and deliver it to them. That will help to ensure that the content on your veterinary website will be consistently successful.

Testimonials:

Both our clients and staff have rallied behind our new blog. Clients are telling me how they are reading the articles and the writing has both empowered and brought together my staff as a cohesive team.